Uchenna Okoro Kalu
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has under its current leadership continued to focus on improving efficiency as well creating avenues to significantly increase revenue to the federal government.
One of the subsidiaries of the federal government agency which is critical to achieving the set objectives of the current NNPC leadership is the National Petroleum Investment Management Services (NAPIMS), which is its Corporate Services Unit (CSU) in the Exploration and Production (E&P) Directorate.
NAPIMS is charged with the responsibility of managing the federal government’s investment in the upstream sector of the oil and gas industry.
Its objective is to enhance and maximise the margin accruing to the federal government through effective supervision of the Joint Venture Companies (JVCs), production sharing companies (PSCs) and service companies (SCs). The subsidiary of the NNPC carries out these responsibilities through adequate supervision of budgets and performance, as well as ranking of projects that give higher returns on investment to the government and also engages in direct exploration of the frontier and inland basins.
In March 2020, the NAPIMS family was reinvigorated with a new energetic management team charged with the responsibility of steering the ship through the turbulent wave of the COVID-19. That was the management team led by its Group General Manager (GGM), Mr. Bala Wunti
After 365 days, Wunti, who leads a team that is at the heart of fulfilling the NNPC’s tripartite role of resource custody, ensuring national energy security and catalysing the nation’s economic development has continued to steer the organisation on the path of transformation and efficiency.
The Group General Manager started his tenure with a visit to NAPIMS’ partners to deliver the mandate of the NNPC GMD, Mallam Mele Kyari, and to seek their collaboration. This mandate which cascades from President Muhammadu Buhari; Kyari; and down to the Chief Operating Officer, Engr. Adokiye Tornbormieye, is to unlock more opportunities and reposition the organisation on the right trajectory to realise its vision to be a world class portfolio manager of the federal government’s investment in the upstream oil and gas sector.
Of utmost importance to NAPIMS is the federal government’s cost optimisation drive to achieve sub-$10 in operating cost, to support the drive to increase crude oil production to three million barrels per day and reserves growth to 40 million barrels, among others.
Clearly, through the implementation of the NNPC’s Transparency, Accountability and Performance Excellence (TAPE) agenda, NAPIMS has entrenched processes to ensure steady production growth and profitability.
The Transparency component of the agenda aims at maintaining positive image, share values of integrity and transparency to all stakeholders, the Accountability assures compliance with business ethics, policies, regulations and accountability to all stakeholders.
In terms of the two-prong item of Performance Excellence, the idea was to entrench a high level of efficiency anchored on efficient implementation of business processes which would also emplace an appropriate reward system for exceptional performance among the workforce.
Indeed, the Wunti-led management team at NAPIMS got into office just as the country was forced into a nationwide lockdown due to the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Owing to this, economic activities were brought to a halt, uncertainties rose and oil price plummeted.
But the NAPIMS rallied the upstream community to offer intervention across the country.
To ensure uninterrupted crude oil and gas flow, NAPIMS immediately deployed a brilliant business continuity plan which was adopted industry-wide and it recorded incredible results.
Indeed, in the past 365 days, NAPIMS has recorded several successes. For instance, NAPIMS ensured that Nigeria’s First Exploration and Petroleum (E&P) development project started oil production from the Anyala West field, located in Oil Mining Leases (OMLs) 83 and 85, offshore Nigeria.
Also, with over $1 billion savings from contract renegotiation, premium payments and rate reductions, NAPIMS achieved reserve increase of 181.5 million barrels of oil equivalent; reduction of unit operating cost to about $13 dollars per barrel and an annual production of about 6.8 billion cubic feet of gas per day.
Equally, despite the challenges posed by the pandemic, NAPIMS achieved the high oil production with 95 per cent plant availability.
It is also worthy to note that under the current leadership, NAPIMS is undergoing immense business processing, improvement with the implementation of the BCP pro-solution for budgets, cash call and performance administration.
The organisation is driving the implementation of the electronic content management solution, in line with its drive to reposition and deliver a robust, more efficient and profitable NAPIMS.
The current management team secured the NNPC’s top management approval for crucial gas sales agreement and negotiation strategies.
As part of its capacity-building initiative, NAPIMS last year held a strategic business retreat, to re-evaluate its mid-term development strategies and initiatives, such as the self-funding proposals for the JVs, took centre stage. The benefit of this exercise was harvested in a recent promotion exercise where 82 NAPIMS staff bagged promotion to management positions across the corporation.
The current leadership has made it a culture to recognise and acknowledge outstanding performance as during the 2020 NAPIMS end of year engagement, many staff were rewarded. Consequently, the entire staff have fully subscribed to the fast-moving train of the new management team under Wunti .
He has maintained a cordial relationship with the two labour unions in the organisation – PENGASSAN and NUPENG – which has ensured that operations are not interrupted.
Also, the Wunti-led management brought to the fore the implementation of the self-funding policy via the proforma profit and loss, which has also changed the way the business is looked at.
Particularly, in the number of commercial agreements that NAPIMS has initiated conversations around as well as those that had been executed. In addition to that, even in the face of all the challenges of COVID-19, the organisation was able to increase and bring on stream additional gas production.
NIPEX achieved 100 per cent portal ability in 2020 and 288 bids were successfully managed with over nd 26,870 suppliers processed.
Also, under the Wunti-led management, governance, regulatory and compliance department has increased NAPIMS’ compliance level with regulatory requirements from 75 per cent to 100 per cent.
Its strategy is already yielding dividend with the search of Nigerian Upstream Cost Optimisation Programme (NUCOP). The key objective of NUCOP is to enhance and optmise NAPIMS’ processes towards increased profitability for the investors which includes government and all the stakeholders.
To further reposition NAPIMS to greater heights, a new asset-based business architecture is being implemented.
Part of the achiements under Wunti in the last one year includes timely completion of the NAPIMS 2019 audited financial statements and prompt remittance of taxes; launching of the NAPIMS employee handbook and migrating to a smart office model which created an additional 115 work spaces.
Commenting on his one year at the organisation, Wunti said: “One year ago when I arrived at NAPIMS, I found something pleasantly surprising to me. What I found was the quality of human resources they have.
“I realised that there are a lot of talented individuals across all demographics of the company. We have some of the best and brightest staff the Nigerian labour market can provide.”
While speaking about the drive to reduce production cost, he said: “A key factor is that if the cost is high and the price is low, the consequence would be that we would not be able to deliver on our mandate of delivery revenue to the federation.
“So we had to take an urgent step to curb the cost, which we did aggressively. We not only repositioned the budget. But, we also went after the cost considering it as a common enemy. In addition, we renegotiated a lot of contracts and we tried to reposition all our priorities which would not have been possible without building a coalition amongst ourselves, the contractors and the operators.”
According to Wunti, there was a compelling need to ensure continuous production of crude oil and gas because any disruption would hinder power operation and without power it would hinder the entire economic activities in the country.
“Secondly, we had to keep producing because we needed the revenue. Without the revenue it would create a great risk to our financial security. Achieving that for me is a major milestone as there was never a disruption. Instead what we witnessed was a growth in our production.
“For the first time in many years on the 17th of April 2020, we were able to record over two billion barrels of crude oil production out of NAPIM’s portfolio alone. That was by no means a great achievement.”
Interestingly, during the Covid-19 pandemic, the Wunti-led management ensured that none of the projects were halted.
Consequently the first E & P asset commenced production.
“Bringing down the cost of production was by no means significant, within the first six-month we took out $3 dollars and we maintained that cord across the year 2020. Thus, we were able to save $1 billion and that translates in terms of adding to the national treasury. That is a very significant saving,” he pointed out.
To Samuel Danladi, there is a brighter future for the organisation, “where we as non-operators asset managers that are not directly connected to the operators are now in control of the operations.”
“The need for the business architecture cannot be over emphasised, as it would place NAPIMS on a higher pedestal in our portfolio management responsibilities. We are excited about the future of NAPIMS by the things we have put in place, particularly the structure that would drive our activities, there is no doubt that we are in for good times at NAPIMS,” he said.
He described Wunti as a leader who leads from the front and leads by example.
On her part, Bamitale Erinle, pointed out that one of the major achievements of the current NAPIMS management under the leadership of Wunti is the approval by the top management of NNPC for the NAPIMS Business Architecture.
According to her, the need for the business architecture cannot be over emphasised because it is going to seriously place NAPIMS on a high pedestal in our portfolio management responsibilities.
“I am excited about the future of NAPIMS with the things being put in place, particularly the structure that is going to drive our activities. There is no doubt that we are in for a good times at NAPIMS,” she added.
Also, Shettima Dambatta said Wunti has been a forward-thinking person and his vision for the organisation goes down to the very bottom of the organisation, saying every staff seems to have aligned with his vision and mission, which aligns with the vision and mission of the organisation.
The forgoing shows that NAPIMS’ management team means business and they are not done yet. Looking ahead, the future looks bright for NAPIMS.
Kalu writes from Abuja
